Shilohouse - Preparing for the Underground Church

http://www.shilohouse.org/wurmbrand.htm

PREPARING FOR THE UNDERGROUND

CHURCH

By Pastor Richard Wurmbrand

Christian
pastors
must
learn
what
an
underground church looks like and what it
does. I spoke with a bishop in Britain for an
hour or so about underground church work.
Finally, he said, "Excuse me, but you speak of
my hobby; I am very interested in church
architecture. Would you please tell me if the
underground churches use Gothic styles in the
building of churches?"
Underground
Church
is
comparatively
unknown. We have it right next door, but we
are not ready to join it and we are not trained
for it. Every Christian pastor must know this
because we might pass through tragic
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circumstances. Even if we do not pass through

these tragic circumstances we have a duty to
help and to instruct those who do pass through
them.
In Muslim nations, in Red China and so on,
many believers have become victims. Many
have gone into prisons and many have died
in prison. We cannot be proud of this. The
better thing would have been to be well
instructed on how to do underground work and
not to be captured. I admire those who know
how to work so well that they are not caught.
We have to know the underground work.
PREPARING FOR SUFFERING
Suering
cannot
be
avoided
in
the
Underground Church, whatever measures are
taken, but suering should be reduced to the
minimum.
What happens in a country when oppressive
powers take over? In some countries the terror
starts
at
once,
as
in
Mozambique
and Cambodia. In other places religious liberty
follows as never before. And so it begins. Some
regimes come to power without having real
power. They do not have the people on their
side. They have not necessarily organized their
police and their sta of the army yet.
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In Russia, the Communists gave immediately

great liberty to the Protestants in order to
destroy the Orthodox.
When they had
destroyed the Orthodox, the turn came for the
Protestants. The initial situation does not last
long. During that time they inltrate the
churches, putting their men in leadership.
They nd out the weaknesses of pastors. Some
might be ambitious men; some might be
entrapped with the love of money. Another
might have a hidden sin somewhere, wherewith
he may be blackmailed. They explain that they
would make it known and thus put their men in
leadership. Then, at a certain moment the
great persecution begins. In Romania such a
clamp-down happened in one day. All the
Catholic bishops went to prison, along with
innumerable priests, monks and nuns. Then
many Protestant pastors of all denominations
were arrested. Many died in prison.
"Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by
many of this man, how much evil he has done
to Thy saints Jerusalem: But the Lord said unto
him, Go thy way; for he is a chosen vessel unto
Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and
kings, and the children of Israel: For I will
show him how great things he must suer for
My name's sake " (Acts 9:13 15 and 16)

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Jesus, our Lord, told Ananias: "Meet Saul of

Tarsus. He will be My underground pastor, My
underground worker." That is what St. Paul was
- a pastor of an Underground Church. Jesus
started a crash course for this underground
pastor. He started it with the words, "I will
show (him) how great things he must suer..."
Preparation for underground work begins by
studying suerology, martyrology. Later, we
will
look
at
the
technical
side
of
underground work, but rst of all there must
be a certain spiritual preparation for it.
In a free country, to be a member of a church,
it is enough to believe and to be baptized. In
the Church underground it is not enough to be
a member in it. You can be baptized and you
can believe, but you will not be a member of
the Underground Church unless you know how
to suer.
You might have the mightiest faith in the
world, but if you are not prepared to suer,
then when you are taken by the police, you will
get two slaps and you will declare anything. So
the preparation for suering is one of the
essentials of the preparation of underground
work.
A Christian does not panic if he is put in
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prison. For the rank and le believer, prison is

a new place to witness for Christ. For a pastor,
prison is a new parish. It is a parish with no
great income but with great opportunities for
work. I speak a little of this in my book, With
God In Solitary Connement.
In other books I mention Morse code, which is
also part of the training for the Underground
Church. You know what this is - a code by
which messages are conveyed. Through this
code you can preach the Gospel to those who
are to your right and left.
Free parishioners look at their watch; "Already
he has preached for thirty minutes. Will he
never nish?" When arrested, watches are
taken away from you; you have the parishioners
with you the whole week and can preach to
them from morning to night! They have no
choice. There have never been, in the history of
the Romanian or the Russian Church, so many
conversions brought about as there have been
in prison. So do not fear prison.
Look upon it as just a new assignment given by
God.
Men can accept this. But what about the
terrible tortures which are inicted on
prisoners?
What will we do about these
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tortures? Will we be able to bear them? If I do

not bear them, I put in prison another fty or
sixty men whom I know because that is what
the oppressors wish from me, to betray those
around me. Hence comes the great need for
preparation for suering, which must start
now. It is too diicult to prepare yourself for it
when you are already in prison.
The preparation for underground work is
deep spiritualization. As we peel an onion in
preparation for its use, so God must "peel"
from us what are mere words, sensations of our
enjoyments in religion, in order to arrive at the
reality of our faith. Jesus has told us "that
whosoever will follow" Him will have to "take
up their cross," and He, Himself, showed how
heavy this cross can be. We have to
be prepared for this.
We have to make the preparation now before
we are imprisoned. In prison you lose
everything. You are undressed and given a
prisoner's suit. No more nice furniture, nice
carpets or nice curtains. You do not have a wife
or husband any more and you do not have your
children. You do not have your library and you
never see a ower. Nothing of what makes life
pleasant remains. Nobody resists who has not
renounced the pleasures of life beforehand.
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I personally use an exercise. I live in the United

States of America. Can you imagine what an
American supermarket looks like? You nd
there many delicious things. I look at
everything and say to myself, "I can go without
this thing and that thing; this thing is very
nice, but I can go without: this third thing I
can go without, too." I visited the whole
supermarket and did not spend one dollar. I
had the joy of seeing many beautiful things and
the second joy to know that I can go without.
DOUBT MAKES TRAITORS
I am Jewish. In Hebrew, the language which
Jesus Himself spoke and in which the rst
revelation
has
been
given,
the
word
"doubt" does not exist. To doubt is as wrong
for a man as it would be for him to walk on
four legs he is not meant to walk on four legs.
A man walks erect; he is not a beast. To doubt
is subhuman.
To every one of us doubts come, but do not
allow doubts about essential doctrines of the
Bible
such
as
the
existence
of
God,
the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the
existence of eternal life to make a nest in your
mind. Every theological or philosophical doubt
makes you a potential traitor. You can allow
yourself doubts while you have a nice study and
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you prepare sermons, and you eat well - or you

write a book. Then you can allow yourself all
kinds of daring ideas and doubts. When you
are tortured these doubts are changed into
treason because you have to decide to live or
die for this faith.
One of the most important things about the
spiritual preparation of an underground
worker is the solution of his doubts. In
mathematics, if you do not nd the solution
you may have made a mistake somewhere, so
you continue until you nd out. Don't live with
doubts, but seek their solution.
TEST OF TORTURE
Now to come to the very moment of
torture; torture is sometimes very painful.
Sometimes it is a simple beating. We have all
been spanked as children and beating is just
another spanking. A simple beating is very easy
to take. Jesus has said we should come to Him
like children, which is rather like candidates
for spanking!
However, with us, Communists did not stop at
beatings - they used very rened tortures. Now
torture, you must know, can work both ways. It
can harden you and strengthen your decision
not to tell the police anything. There are
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thieves who resist any torture and would not

betray those with whom they have co-operated
in theft. The more you beat them the more
obstinate they become. Or, torture can just
break your will.
Now I will tell you of one very interesting case
which was published by the Czech Communist
Press. Novotny, who was the predecessor of
Dubcek and who was a Communist dictator,
had arrested one of his intimate comrades, a
Communist leader, a convinced atheist, and a
member of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party. (Not only Christians, Jews or
patriots were in prison. One Communist
arrested another and tortured him just as they
would do anybody else.) They arrested this
Communist leader and put him in a prison cell
alone. Electromagnetic rays, which disturb the
mind,
passed
through
this
cell.
A
loudspeaker repeated day and night: "Is your
name Joseph or not Joseph?" (His name was
not Joseph.)
They tried to drive him mad; day and night. He
felt that he would lose his mind. At a certain
moment, he got an illumination. "I have now
met unmitigated evil. If Communists torture a
Christian, it is not absolutely evil because
Communists believe that they will construct an
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earthly paradise. Christians hinder them, so it

is right to torture Christians. But when a
Communist tortures a Communist, it is torture
for torture's sake.
There is absolutely no
justication for it. But wait a little bit. Every
coin has two sides; every electric cable has two
poles. If there is an unmitigated evil; against
whom does this unmitigated evil ght? There
must be an unmitigated good. This is God, and
against Him they ght."
When he was called to the interrogator, he
entered smiling into the room and told him
that he could switch o the loudspeaker now
because it had attained its result. "I have
become a Christian." The oicer asked him,
"How did it happen?" He told him the whole
story. The oicer said, "Wait a little bit." He
called a few of his comrades and said, "Please
repeat the story before my comrades." He
repeated the story, and the captain told the
other police oicer, "I told you that this
method will not work. You have overdone it."
The Devil is not all mighty and all wise like
God. He makes mistakes. Evil torture is an
excess which can be used very well spiritually.
MOMENT OF CRISIS
Torture has a moment of explosion, and the
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torturer waits for this critical moment. Learn

how to conquer doubt and to think thoroughly.
There is always one moment of crisis when you
are ready to write or pronounce the name of
your accomplice in the underground work, or
to say where the secret printing shop is, or
something of that kind. You have been tortured
so much nothing counts any more; the fact that
I should not have pain also does not count.
Draw this last conclusion at the stage at which
you have arrived and you will see that you will
overcome this one moment of crisis; it gives
you an intense inner joy. You feel that Christ
has been with you in that decisive moment.
Jailers today are now trained and rened,
aware that there is a moment of crisis. If they
cannot get anything from you in that moment,
then they abandon torturing: they know its
continuation to be useless.
There are a few more points in connection with
torture. It is very important to understand
what Jesus said: "Take no thought for the
morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for
itself." I have had fourteen years of prison.
Brother Hrapov had twenty six, Wong Ming Dao
had twenty-eight. It seems impossible to bear
long years of prison. You are not asked to bear
it all at once. Do not bear even one day at a
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time - bear an hour at a time. One hour of pain

everybody can bear. We have had a terrible
toothache, a car accident - passing, perhaps,
through untold anguish. You are not meant to
bear pain more than this one present minute.
What amplies pain is the memory that I have
been beaten and tortured so many times and
that tomorrow they will take me again, and the
day after tomorrow. Tomorrow, I might not be
alive - or they might not be alive. Tomorrow,
there can be an overthrow, as in Romania.
Yesterday beating has passed: tomorrow's
torture has not come yet.
LOVE SUPREME
The Bible teaches some words very hard to
take: "Whosoever does not hate father, mother,
child, brother, sister - cannot be My disciple."
These words mean almost nothing in a free
country
You probably know from The Voice of the
Martyrs literature that thousands of children
had been taken away from their parents in the
former Soviet Union because they were taught
about Christ. You must love Christ more than
your family. There you are before a court and
the judge tells you that if you deny Christ you
may keep your children. If not, this will be the
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last time you will see them. Your heart may

break, but your answer should be, "I love God
Nadia Sloboda left her house for four years of
prison. Her children were taken from her, but
she left her house singing. The children, for
whom the police waited with a truck to take
them as she left, told their singing mother,
"Don't worry about us. Wherever they put us,
we will not give up our faith." They did not.
When Jesus was on the cross He not only
suered physically; He had His mother in front
of Him, suering. His mother had the
Son suering. They loved each other, but the
glory of God was at stake and here any human
sentiment must be secondary. Only if we take
this attitude once and for all can we prepare
for underground work.
Only Christ, the Great Suerer, the Man of
Sorrows, must live in us. There have been cases
in Communist countries when Communist
torturers threw away their rubber truncheons
with which they beat a Christian and asked,
"What is this halo which you have around your
head? How is it that your face shines? I cannot
beat you anymore." It is said of Stephen in the
Bible that "his face shone."
We have known cases of Communist torturers
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who told the prisoner, "Shout loudly, cry loudly

as if I would beat you so that my comrades will
know that I torture you. But I cannot beat
you." Thus, you would shout without anything
happening to you.
There are other cases when prisoners really are
tortured, sometimes to death. You have to
choose between dying with Christ and for
Christ or becoming a traitor. What is the worth
of continuing to live when you will be ashamed
to look into the mirror, knowing that the
mirror will show you the face of a traitor?
TRUTH ABOUT THE TRUTH
How much each one of us can suer depends
on how much he is bound up with a cause, how
dear this cause is to him, and how much it
means for him.
In this respect we have had in Communist
countries very big surprises. There have been
gifted preachers and writers of Christian books
who have become traitors. The composer of the
best hymnal of Romania became the composer
of the best communist hymnal of Romania.
Everything depends on whether we have
remained in the sphere of words or if we are
merged with the divine realities.
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God is the Truth. The Bible is the truth about

the Truth. Theology is the truth about the truth
about the Truth. A good sermon is the truth
about the truth about the truth, about the
Truth. It is not the Truth. The Truth is God
alone. Around this Truth there is a scaolding
of words, of theologies, and of exposition.
None of these is of any help in times of
suering. It is only the Truth Himself Who is of
help, and we have to penetrate through
sermons, through theological books, through
everything which is 'words' and be bound up
with the reality of God Himself.
I have told in the West how Christians were
tied to crosses for four days and four nights.
The crosses were put on the oor and
other prisoners were tortured and made to
fulll their bodily necessities upon the faces
and the bodies of the crucied ones. I have
since been asked: "Which Bible verse helped
and strengthened you in those circumstances?"
My answer is: "NO Bible verse was of any help."
It is sheer cant and religious hypocrisy to say,
"This Bible verse strengthens me, or that
Bible verse helps me." Bible verses alone are
not meant to help.
We knew Psalm 23 - "The Lord is my Shepherd;
I shall not want... though I walk through the
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valley of the shadow of death...." When you

pass through suering you realize that it was
never meant by God that Psalm 23 should
strengthen you. It is the Lord who can
strengthen you, not the Psalm which speaks of
Him so doing. It is not enough to have the
Psalm. You must have the One about whom the
Psalm speaks. We also knew the verse: "My
Grace is suicient for thee." But the verse is
not suicient. It is the Grace which is suicient
and not the verse.
Pastors and zealous witnesses who are
handling the Word as a calling from God are in
danger of giving holy words more value than
they really have.
Holy words are only the
means to arrive at the reality expressed by
them. If you are united with the Reality, the
Lord Almighty, evil loses its power over you; it
cannot break the Lord Almighty. If you only
have the words of the Lord Almighty you can be
very easily broken.
SPIRITUAL EXERCISES
The preparation for underground work is
deep spiritualization. As we peel an onion in
preparation for its use, so God must "peel"
from us what are mere words, sensations of our
enjoyments in religion, in order to arrive at the
reality of our faith. Jesus has told us "that
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whosoever will follow" Him will have to "take

up their cross," and He, Himself, showed how
heavy this cross can be. We have to
be prepared for this.
We have to make the preparation now before
we are imprisoned. In prison you lose
everything. You are undressed and given a
prisoner's suit. No more nice furniture, nice
carpets or nice curtains. You do not have a wife
or husband any more and you do not have your
children. You do not have your library and you
never see a ower. Nothing of what makes life
pleasant remains. Nobody resists who has not
renounced the pleasures of life beforehand.
The Devil is not all mighty and all wise like
God. He makes mistakes. Evil torture is an
excess which can be used very well spiritually.
LEARN TO BE SILENT
In the Underground Church, silence is one of
the rst rules. Every superuous word you
speak can put somebody in prison. A friend
of mine, a great Christian composer, went to
prison because Christians had the habit of
saying, "How beautiful is this song composed
by Brother _____." They praised him, and for
this he got fteen years of prison. Sing the
song, but do not mention the name of the one
who has written it.
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You cannot learn to be silent the very moment

the country is taken over. You have to learn to
be silent from the moment of your conversion.
The secretary to Solzhenitsyn was put under
such pressure by the Communists (and she had
been denounced by Solzhenitsyn's wife) that
she nished by hanging herself. If Solzhenitsyn
had kept silent, this would not have happened.
Another question which is very important: I
thank God for the years which I passed in
Solitary connement. I was, for three years,
thirty feet beneath the earth. I never heard a
word. I never spoke a word. There were no
books. The outward voices ceased. The guards
had felt soled shoes; you did not hear their
approach. Then, with time, the inner voices
ceased.
We were drugged, we were beaten. I forgot my
whole theology. I forgot the whole Bible. One
day I observed that I had forgotten the "Our
Father." I could not say it any more. I knew that
it began with "Our Father...," but I did not
know the continuation. I just kept happy and
said, "Our Father, I have forgotten the prayer,
but you surely know it by heart. You hear it so
many thousand times a day, so you assign an
angel to say it for me, and I will just keep
quiet."
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For a time my prayers were, "Jesus, I love You."

And then after a little time again, "Jesus, I love
You. Jesus, I love You." Then it became too
diicult even to say this because we were
doped with drugs which would destroy our
minds. We were very hungry. We had one slice
of bread a week. There were the beatings, and
the tortures, and the lack of light, and other
things. It became impossible to concentrate my
mind to even say so much as, "Jesus, I love
You." I abandoned it because I knew that it was
necessary. The highest form of prayer which I
know is the quiet beating of a heart which
loves Him. Jesus should just hear "tick-a-tock,
tick-a-tock", and He would know that every
heartbeat is for Him.
When I came out from solitary connement
and was with other prisoners and heard them
speaking, I wondered why they spoke! So much
of our speech is useless. Today men become
acquainted with each other and one will say,
"How do you do?" and the other answers, "How
do you do?" What is the use of this? Then one
will say, "Don't you think that the weather is
ne?" and the other thinks, and says, "Yes, I
think it is ne." Why do we have to speak on
whether the weather is ne? We do not take
earnestly the word of Jesus Who says that men
will be judged not for every bad word, but for
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every useless one. So it is written in the Bible.

Useless talking in some countries means prison
and death for your brother. A word of praise
about your brother, if it is not necessary, may
mean catastrophe. For example, somebody
comes to visit you and you say, "Oh! I'm sorry
you were not here before - brother W. has just
left." The visitor could be an informer of the
secret police. Now she will know that brother
W. is in town! Keep your mouth shut. Learn to
do it now.
PERMISSIBLE STRATAGEMS
You cannot do underground work without using
stratagems. I know of one case which happened
in Russia. The Communists suspected that the
Christians were gathering somewhere and they
surveyed a street. They knew that the meeting
must be there somewhere. They saw a young
boy going toward the house where they
supposed the meeting would be. They stopped
the boy and the police asked him, "Where are
you going?" With a sad face, he said, "My
oldest brother died, and now we gather the
whole family to read his testament." The police
oicer was so impressed that he patted the boy
and said, "Just go." The boy had not told a lie.
We are not obliged to tell an atheist tyrant the
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truth. We are not obliged to tell him what we

are doing. It is indecent for his side to put
questions to me, impertinence.
RESISTING BRAINWASHING
One of the greatest methods is not only
physical torture; it is brainwashing. We have to
know
how
to
resist
brainwashing. Brainwashing exists in the free
world, too. The press, radio and television
brainwash us. There exists no motive in the
world to drink Coca-Cola. You drink it because
you are brainwashed. Water is surely better
than Coca-Cola. But nobody advertises, "Drink
water, drink water." if water were advertised,
we would drink water. Some have driven this
technique of brainwashing to its extreme. The
methods vary, but brainwashing in my
Romanian prison consisted essentially of this:
we had to sit seventeen hours on a form which
gave no possibility to lean, and you were not
allowed to close your eyes. For seventeen hours
a day we had to hear, "Communism is good,
Communism is good, Communism is good, etc.;
Christianity is dead, Christianity is dead,
Christianity is dead, etc.; Give up, give up, etc."
You were bored after one minute of this but
you had to hear it the whole seventeen hours
for weeks, months, years even, without any
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interruption.
I can assure you, it is not easy. It is one of the
worst tortures; much worse than physical
torture.
But Christ has foreseen all things
because with Him there is no time. Future,
past, present are one and the same: He knows
all things from the beginning. Communists
invented brainwashing too late! Christ had
already invented the opposite to brainwashing heart washing. He has said: "Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they will see God."
Stephen, the rst martyr for Christ, had around
him hundreds with big stones in their hands to
throw at him. He said: "I see." And the wife of
Stephen probably thought he saw the danger
he was in and would run away. But he said: "I
see JESUS standing at the right hand of God."
Perhaps she said (it is not recorded), "Don't
you see the mob around you ready to throw
stones at you?" "Oh yes! I see some little ants
there below not worth mentioning. I look to
JESUS." He did not look to those who wished
to kill him. Blessed are the pure in heart.
I had passed through brainwashing for over
two years. Now the Communists would have
said that my brain was still dirty. In the same
rhythm in which they said, "Christianity is
dead," I and others repeated to ourselves:
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http://www.shilohouse.org/wurmbrand.htm

"Christ also has been dead, Christ also has

been dead." But we knew He rose from the
dead. We remembered that we lived in
the communion of saints.
OVERCOMING SOLITUDE
One of the greatest problems for an
underground ghter is to know how to ll up
his solitude. We had absolutely no books. Not
only no Bible; but we had no books, no scrap of
paper, and no pencil. We never heard a noise,
and there was absolutely nothing to distract
our attention. You looked at the walls and that
was all.
Now normally a mind under such
circumstances becomes mad.
I can tell you from my own experience how I
avoided becoming mad, but this again has to
be
prepared
by
a
life
of
spiritual
exercise beforehand. How much can you be
alone without the Bible? How much can you
bear to be with yourself without switching on
the radio, or a record player, etc.?
I, and many other prisoners, did it like this. We
never slept during the night. We slept during
the day. The whole night we were awake. You
know that a Psalm says, "...bless you the
Lord,... which by night stand in the house of
the Lord." One prayer at night is worth ten
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prayers during the day.

All great sins and crimes are committed during
the night. The great robberies, drunkenness,
reveling, adultery - this whole life of sin is a
night life. During the day everyone has to work
in a factory, college, or somewhere. The
demonic forces are forces of the night, and
therefore, it is so important to oppose them
during the night.
In solitary connement we awoke when the
other prisoners went to bed. We lled our time
with a program which was so heavy, we could
not fulll it. We started with a prayer, a prayer
in which we traveled through the whole world.
We prayed for each country, for where we knew
the names of towns and men, and we prayed for
great preachers. It took a good hour or two to
come back. We prayed for pilots, and for those
on the sea, and for those who were in prisons.
After having traveled through the whole world,
I read the Bible from memory. To memorize the
Bible is very important for an underground
worker.
THE JOY OF THE LORD
Just to make us laugh also a little bit, I will tell
you one thing which happened. Once while I lay
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on the few planks which were my bed, I read

from memory the Sermon on the Mount,
according to Luke. I arrived at the part where
it is said, "When you are persecuted... for the
Son of man's sake, rejoice you, in that day and
leap for joy...." You will remember that it is
written like this. I said, "How could I commit
such a sin of neglect? Christ has said that we
have to do two dierent things. One to rejoice,
I have done. The second, to 'leap for joy,' I
have not done." So I jumped. I came down
from my bed and I began to jump around.
In prison, the door of a cell has a peep hole
through which the warden looks into the cell.
He happened to look in while I jumped around.
So he believed that I had become mad. They
had an order to behave very well with madmen
so that their shouting and banging on the wall
should not disturb the order of the prison. The
guard immediately entered, quieted me down
and said, "You will be released; you can see
everything will be all right. Just remain quiet. I
will bring you something." He brought me a big
loaf of bread. Our portion was one slice of
bread a week, and now I had a whole loaf, plus
cheese. It was white. Never just eat cheese;
rst of all admire its whiteness. It is beautiful
to look upon. He brought me also sugar. He
spoke a few nice words again and locked the
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door and left.

I said, "I will eat these things after having
nished my chapter from St. Luke." I lay down
again and tried to remember where I had left
o. "Yes, at 'when you are persecuted for My
Name's sake, rejoice... and leap for joy because
great is your reward." I looked at the loaf of
bread and the cheese. Really, the reward was
great!
So the next task is to think of the Bible and to
meditate upon it. Every night, I composed a
sermon beginning with "Dear brethren, and
sisters" and nishing with "Amen." After I
composed it, I delivered it. I put them
afterwards in very short rhymes so that I could
remember them. My books, With God In
Solitary Connement and If Prison Walls Could
Speak, contain some of these sermons. I have
memorized three hundred and fty of them.
Out of bread I made chessmen, some of them
whitened with a little bit of chalk and the
others gray. I played chess with myself. Never
believe that Bob Fisher is the greatest chess
master of the world. He won the last match
with Spassky. He won eight games and lost
two. I, in three years, never lost a game; I
always won either with white or gray!

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Shilohouse - Preparing for the Underground Church

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Never allow your mind to become distressed

because then the Communists have you
entirely in their hands. Your mind must
be continually exercised. It must be alert, it
must think. It must, everyone according to his
abilities, compose dierent things, etc.
I have told you all these things because they
belong to the secrets of the underground
worker when he suers. May God bless you.
Richard Wurmbrand
Founder of Voice of the Martyrs
NOTE:
While I hope for a people better
prepared to work outside the scrutiny of ones
who are enemies of the Gospel; we must be
prepared, and hopefully Pastor Wurmbrand's
experience will help motivate us to do what is
necessary NOW to set up infrastructure that
will not be easily compromised at a later date...
I pray that as we continue to work through
internal issues confronting the American
church; every thing that seems critical will not
be viewed as an attack, but rather an
opportunity to examine ourselves...
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